


Thin Ice

by MissMoe



Category: Hockey RPF, Original Work
Genre: Aftermath of Injury, Alternate Universe - Hockey, Angst, Derogatory Language, Homophobic Language, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pittsburgh Penguins, Slice of Life, Tom Wilson is an ass but learns not to be one, Washington Capitals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-21
Updated: 2018-07-06
Packaged: 2019-05-09 15:08:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 12,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14718425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissMoe/pseuds/MissMoe
Summary: Tom Wilson loves being Tom Wilson, ass-whooper extraordinaire, until he seriously injures a player on the hated Pittsburgh Penguins, a rookie being mentored by the King of Jerks himself, Sidney Crosby. Then the shit hits the fan.





	1. The Harder the Hit, The Sweeter the Savor

**Author's Note:**

> I thought I'd play around with two of my original characters from my other work by inserting them into an AU hockey fic. This could be an utter disaster. Let me know if it is. Here's the first chapter. And yes, I've had a few glasses.

 

He had a reputation for being an asshole, a goon who didn’t hold back from putting another man facedown on the ice and wrapped up tight in a shroud of agony, mummified with pain. So Tom Wilson was just doing what he did best when he slammed the nineteen-year-old too-slim Swiss-French kid into the boards, sending him ricocheting like a puck behind the Capitols’ net, then lying unnaturally still for the six seconds before the whistle was blown. That entitled douchebag, Sidney Crosby, rushed over and crouched over the boy, Jean-Louis Lamarck, the first openly bisexual (read: super gay!) player in the NHL and the rookie the Penguins’ captain was mentoring. Geno Malkin was beside Crosby in a heartbeat, frantically waving the Pens’ trainer over. This was bad. The kid wasn’t moving. At all.

Wilson skated nonchalantly between the blue lines delineating the neutral zone, circling like a vulture over carrion, his expression fairly shouting, “What? That lightweight piece of gay ass has no business playing a man’s sport.”

Then they showed it on the Jumbotron hanging over his head at PPG Paints Arena, on all four screens, the hit that turned a promising six-foot-two, one-hundred-eighty-pound man into a shredded ragdoll. Following the blow-by-blow replay of the hit was the camera shot of Lamarck’s six-year-old stepdaughter in the stands, her mouth an ‘O’ mimicking the traumatized figure in Edvard Munch’s harrowing painting, _The Scream_. Next was a shot of the girl’s twin brother, his face frozen in shock, then Lamarck’s own two-year-old son crying in the arms of Lamarck’s partner, James Miller, a former pro footballer with the Denver Broncos. Christ. The fans in the arena were silent in horror at first. After they removed Lamarck’s limp, unconscious body from the ice on a stretcher and into the tunnel, the crowd erupted in loud boos. Things were thrown onto the ice: beer cans, plastic cups, garbage. It was chaos. After a fifteen-minute delay, the audience being warned three times to calm the fuck down, the game resumed. Crosby was livid. The entire Penguins bench was out for blood. Malkin was spitting out curses in Russian. Capitals' captain, Alex Ovechkin, was returning the volley, also in Russian, but Ovi's voice carried no conviction. The old dog was getting a little tired of taking the heat for his winger. The interviews with the media after the game were going to be a right royal bitch. Wilson was tossed from the game with less than four minutes left in regulation play, more for his own safety than anything else. There would likely be an inquiry and maybe a suspension after the Department of Player Safety reviewed the video footage. Whatever. He'd served a suspension before, way fewer than he should have.

“Hockey’s no place for fags,” Wilson muttered to himself as he skated off the ice, serenaded by the invectives raining down on him from the Pittsburgh fans. “Serves him right.”

Later that night, though, he received a call from his coach, Barry Trotz. “The kid’s in the hospital. He’s got a ruptured spleen and a few broken ribs. Maybe a concussion.”

“Okay,” replied Tom. “No biggie.”

“There’s more,” said Trotz with a loud sigh over the phone. He sounded genuinely depressed. “There looks to be some damage to the spinal cord.”

“Oh.”

There was another sigh, like a gust of wind blowing through a hollow pipe. “And he’s on life support.”

“What?” Oh, shit. Motherfucking shit!

“It’s just for now…to help him breathe…keep him breathing…fuck…this is so...”

Tom gulped, heat radiating from his gut and out the ends of his extremities. He could be in one of those _Lord of the Rings_ movies, playing the role of a wizard with lightning bolts shooting from his fingertips. If only this were a movie. “But…I mean…I know I went in hard, but…I didn’t mean to _kill_ the kid. Fuck! Why did they let that gay boy into—”

“Are you kidding me?” screamed Trotz. “This isn’t about him being gay, for Christ’s sake! Jesus! Are you telling me you put him down because he’s fucking gay?”

“No! Fuck, no!” And then Tom sputtered like an old VW going up a steep hill. Well? Wasn’t that the real reason? He thought back to the play, the hit from behind that sent a defenseless young man bouncing and broken into the boards, then back even further, to the start of training camp when word had spread like wildfire that the Penguins had signed a gay player. But he wasn’t just gay—as if that weren’t bad enough—he was gay and _married_. Tom couldn’t believe the world had come to this, and he couldn’t believe the reports he was hearing and reading about this Jean-Louis Lamarck. Swiss-French. Just nineteen years of age. With a two-year-old son he had fathered with a former girlfriend. Now married for the past year to a four-time Pro-Bowler with the Denver Broncos who had been a starting tight end, a man who had children of his own, a boy and a girl who were six-year-old twins. How fucked up was _that_? The universe had turned upside down as far as Tom was concerned. It wasn’t right, and Tom Wilson was the kind of man to make things right.

There was a slew of hateful shit flying all over Twitter within hours. The worst were from Crosby himself, sitting high on his horse, My Pretty Pony, and tweeting the most ridiculous bullshit about “I’m praying for my boy J-L” and “love will win out in the end.” Yeah, right. Tom could just see Sid loving all over his “boy” like the smarmy molester he was. He wondered what kind of “mentoring” Crosby had given the kid; probably the kind of mentoring that involved Sid sucking on the kid’s married dick. They were all perverts, the whole lot of them. They could all rot in hell.

The next day during practice, Trotz called Wilson into his office and gave him the news. A three-game suspension had been handed down, to be served immediately. “It might be good if you paid the kid a visit at the hospital. You can’t be here anyway.”

Goddamn it. That was the _last_ thing Tom wanted to do. Hockey was for _men_ and injuries were all a part of the game. Players wore their scars proudly, like fucking gold medals for shit’s sake. They didn’t cry, they didn’t complain, even if loud chirping was allowed and encouraged. He slammed his fist into the door of the office as he left, denting it and splitting his knuckles. It felt all too good.

 


	2. America, Fuck Yeah!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The NHL in all its macho glory, as seen through the eyes of Tom Wilson.

 

He waited until the third and last day of his suspension to pay his visit to Lamarck. Not that he wanted to see the kid _at all_ —hell, he was no Socrates eager to drink the poison—but Ovechkin basically gave him no choice.

“We go,” Ovi stated over the phone. “You and me. We go and YOU say big fucking SORRY to little gay boy, okay? Then you buy me best most expensive DRINK because you give me big fucking pain in my ASS, and I no like pain in my ass.”

Tom just snorted and scratched his balls. He was slouched on his sofa in the living room watching the NHL Network on his sixty-five inch XLED LCD TV, clad in a pair of stained sweatpants and an old Def Leppard tank top he had inherited from his dad. He looked and smelled hideous, but that’s what happens when one doesn’t shower or shave for two days in a row and yet engages in repeated bouts of self-pleasuring with a beer in one hand and one’s own cock in the other.

“Yeah, well…” Tom gave his balls another loving roll in the palm of his hand, then dared a sniff and nearly puked. “I guess I better jump in the shower.” He heard Ovi mutter something incomprehensible in Russian.

Then, in English, Ovi accused. “You have been jacking it 24/7, yes?” The man was like some omniscient god. “You are filthy pig, Tommy Boy. One hour. I pick you up. Wait for me by curb. Do not be late.”

Great. Riding shotgun in his captain’s tricked out Mercedes S63 AMG with Ovi flouting red lights and stop signs and road rules in general was always a blazing treat. Experience had taught Tom to just close his eyes if he wanted to survive, and thereby enjoy, playing Russian roulette with a high end luxury vehicle. “Fine,” he said, but Ovi had already ended the call. Tom got up like a man on his way to the dentist for a root canal: very reluctantly. He left the TV on, just to pump himself full of even more bile. 

For the last forty-eight hours, all the sports pundits were talking about him—Tom Wilson, Asshole of the Century—and holding heated debates regarding the shitload of penalties he had accumulated versus the number of suspensions leveled, as if there were some mathematical formula to calculate his status as a top ranking dickwad. According to the statistics, he should have already been inducted into the Hockey Hall of Offenders Who Have Only Had Their Wrists Slapped. What nonsense. When had hockey become a sport for wusses? Tom wished he could have been drafted during the good old days when players didn’t have to wear sissy helmets, when a man wasn’t considered worth his salt until he had at least two front teeth knocked out and _not_ replaced, when intimidation was practiced the same way one mastered shooting the puck, when putting one’s shoulder into an opposing player’s head was rewarded with a round of free drinks at the bar instead of a $2900 fine. He and his captain had always been on the same page…but now, even Ovi was telling him to rein it in and, even worse, Ovi was telling the media regarding Lamarck, “You know, who he fuck is his own business. Me, I like pussy.” Why not just wave a traitorous rainbow flag, Ovi? It was humiliating enough earlier in the season when every team was ordered to participate in some LGBT awareness campaign for a week that felt like an eternity, swallowing all that self-congratulatory “look how the NHL promotes open dialogue” crap. Some players even wrapped their sticks with multicolored tape to show how progressive and unbiased they were. “The NHL is NOT composed of a bunch of homophobic, gay-bashing cavemen.” Riiight, that’s the _NFL_ , not the NHL. Pffft.

What really made Tom lose his lunch were the post-game interviews with Lamarck that were being shown on a loop it seemed, from when he was first introduced to the public down to his last thirty-second sound bite on the ice after scoring two absolutely wicked goals and three assists in a game against the formidable Tampa Bay Lightning. There was no denying that the kid was having a stellar rookie season. He was killing it on the ice, posting phenomenal numbers and skating like a fiend. The kid had no bulk, but he could fly on the ice, was quick as a dart and if he stole the puck in the neutral zone he could break away in the blink of an eye. He played right wing on Crosby’s line mostly, but other times he was on the ice with Malkin, and the rapport was there for anyone to see. The three of them had something going, and it was going like gangbusters. By February, there was incessant chatter about Lamarck winning the Calder Trophy, about him being the new Guy Lafleur; he was certainly on track to score 50 goals and rack up 100 points by the end of the season if he maintained his current pace. Well, might as well flush _that_ down the toilet.

The video being broadcast right now on the television, recorded two weeks ago according to the time stamp, showed Lamarck in a press room sitting in front of an array of microphones, flanked by Crosby on his left and Malkin on his right, Crosby beaming like a proud parent, grinning from ear to ear every time Lamarck said something demur or witty, which was pretty much every time he opened his goddamn mouth by the way Crosby was gushing over him, Malkin laughing like the village idiot when Lamarck sheepishly admitted that he was afraid of going home after a loss because his six-year-old stepdaughter, Chloe, would “eviscerate” him for not playing up to her standards. Who the fuck uses a word like “eviscerate” anyway? No red-blooded, dyed-in-the-wool _American_ would be caught dead using a fancy pants word like that. Sheesh. And the girl, sickeningly, was a Malkin fan, at least that’s what Lamarck told the fawning media and a blushing Geno. Well, then, she must like her men big and dumb—because Malkin was as big and dumb as they came—and saddled with a heavy foreign accent like her own stepfather, thought Tom. The _Canadiens_ , along with the Russians and Swedes and Finns, mangled the English language bad enough; now there was this Swiss-French dude using vocabulary fit for snobs and intellectuals. There ought to be a fucking law.

But, oh, how the media ate it up! They asked Lamarck leading questions, like, “How do you handle negative comments about your private life?” and “What do you say to those who oppose inclusiveness?” It was all such hypocrisy, because the very people bemoaning “negative comments” and lack of “inclusiveness” were the same ones stirring the pot. It made Tom want to throw up. They were making this kid into the poster child for “What the NHL could be if it didn’t have dirtbags like Tom Wilson spreading shit and ruining the fairy tale.” Yeah, that fucking European fairy was gaying it up with fairy dust all over the place, making people—even the blue-collar meatheads in Pittsburgh—fall head over heels in love with his long honey-gold locks, his brilliant blue eyes, his straight-as-an-arrow aristocratic nose, that obscene mouth with the plush lips…lips that were wrapped around another man’s cock on a regular basis no doubt, a mouth that had probably sucked on both Crosby's and Malkin’s dicks, too. Not that anyone was confessing to that—not Lamarck, not Crosby, not Malkin—but just _look_ at them. Crosby and Malkin were crushing like silly pubescent girls over this boy. The eyes don’t lie. Plus, there had long been rumors about Crosby and Malkin playing hide-the-sausage with their boners, with each other, with god knows how many other sickos. Tom gave one last stare at the television screen and then headed to the bathroom, where he jacked it in record time in the shower to the image of Crosby and Malkin shoving their cocks up Lamarck’s tight rookie ass, one from the front, one from behind, Lamarck sandwiched between them crying and begging for mercy. “Yeah, you little fuck, take my cock,” Tom gritted out, giving his soapy dick a final tug before he came. He watched the hot spray from the showerhead wash his cum off the tile wall and wondered why he felt so dirty.

***

He made it barely in time downstairs with his duffel bag, his hair still wet, when Ovi crashed to an abrupt stop in front of Tom’s apartment building, the front passenger side tire jumping the curb and leaving deep skid marks on the grass. He didn’t wait for Tom to even shut the door before he peeled off again into heavy traffic with nary a glance in his side view mirror.

“Jesus Christ!” Tom shouted. “Where’s the fucking fire?”

“No fire. I’m hungry.”

Oh, shit. Ovi was as gnarly as a bear post-hibernation if his blood sugar was low. Tom closed his eyes and put his life in the hands of the universe. It was roughly a four-hour drive to Pittsburgh, where Lamarck was being treated, and then another three hours to Columbus, Ohio, where they would meet the team for their game against the Blue Jackets the next day. The unexpected smell of food and the sound of slurping made Tom crack an eyelid. He looked over to see Ovi eating borscht out of a takeout container from Mari Vanna, Ovi’s favorite restaurant in DC, and steering the car with his _knees_ and _elbows_. That was reason enough for Tom to shut his eyes even tighter. 

“You want taste?” he heard Ovi inquire.

The car swerved erratically, followed by a chorus of honking and beeping from all around them, but Tom didn’t look, no, he merely crossed his arms over his chest and prepared himself to absorb the impact of multiple airbags deploying at any second. He was a seasoned hockey player. He knew how to take a hit and, right now, he knew how to pray. By some miracle (thank the hockey gods!), they arrived at the hospital in just under four hours and in one piece. Ovi had driven pedal to the metal, weaving in and out of traffic like a possessed madman, slowing down only when his illegal police radar detector sounded its obnoxious cricket chirp warning.

“Well, _that_ was fun,” Tom announced when he felt them come to a screeching halt in the visitors’ parking lot. He rubbed his eyes and got out of the car, stiff like a corpse. He must have been as tense as a bowstring the entire ride up.

“Fun?” Ovi snarked. “Fun is when you have six beautiful women, all sisters, in hot tub with you. This is no fun. We…no, YOU have work to do. You better no screw up, you hear?” Ovi threatened, poking Tom in the chest. Then he stalked into the hospital, mashing his phone with his bear paw. Tom followed behind him in silence as Ovi put the phone to his ear. “Yes? James? I am here. Yes. He is alive. Yes. Yes. Okay.” Ovi turned to Tom as they waited at the bank of elevators. “Fifth floor,” he told him. Then he scratched glumly at his beard. “Sid and Geno are here, too. So are Dumo and Zach.” 

Ah, fucking mother of god! Brian Dumoulin and Zach Aston-Reese, two players that Tom had flattened into human pancakes earlier that season. Zach had suffered a broken jaw and a concussion and spent time on the IR. Just what he needed, more roadkill staring him in the face. Ovi had had his own on-ice smackdowns in the past with both Sid and Geno, so this was going to be a very nice picnic all around. The elevator dinged and they both entered the compartment with a gloomy cloud hanging over their heads, neither one saying a word as the doors slid closed again with a dull, funereal _thunk_. What was in store for him on the fifth floor? Tom wondered. Probably something worse than a root canal.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Since this is AU, you’ll notice that I’m picking and choosing which “facts” to use or abuse. This will hold true for both real persons (e.g. Sid, Geno, Tom, etc.) and my original characters (Jean-Louis, James, the kids, etc.). Tom, for example, is Canadian in real life, but in this fic I’ve made him American bred; players such as Dumoulin and Aston-Reese were injured during the playoffs this season in real life, but here I’m shifting the injuries to the regular season. While my original characters are essentially the same in spirit and appearance, they are not quite the same people as they are in my previous works featuring them. James is still a former pro football player but he’s far saner here in this fic, and Jean-Louis is a hockey player and not a paleontologist, obviously. There are other changes to their backstory as well. This shouldn’t be a cause for confusion if you haven’t read the earlier works, but if you have, just go with the flow. It’s all about having fun.


	3. Mano a Mano

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tom visits Jean-Louis in the hospital. It's weird.

 

All four Penguins—Crosby, Malkin, Dumoulin, Aston-Reese—were standing in a tight huddle in the waiting area to the left of the nurse’s station when Ovi and Tom exited the elevator. “Ignore them,” Ovi said with a cursory wave of his paw, and then he made a beeline to the counter and announced, “We are here to see patient: Jean-Louis Lamarck. We have permission.”

“Permission?” queried one of the nurses, a no-nonsense woman in her mid-thirties who was a dead ringer for Nurse Ratched from the movie, _One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest_. Not only that, she was a redhead and buxom, and Ovi had a _thing_ for redheads with huge tits, especially if they were dressed in a nurse’s uniform and looked like they had the balls to spank a grown man silly.

Seeing the delectable morsel in front of him, Ovi cranked the charm up to eleven with a salacious pass of his tongue along his bottom lip, channeling that solid gold mob vibe, pouring it on thick, Slavic accent and all, draping himself over the countertop, biceps flexing. “How about you and me, sweetheart? Later? Drinks? I am man who know what woman want. What woman _need_.” Ovi gestured at his own body. “Pleasure. Pleasure only man like me can give.”

Tom wanted to die, just lay down on the floor and fucking die. He’d gone clubbing with his captain enough times to know what the man was capable of and, well, Ovi was just getting started. At this rate, Tom figured he’d be better off taking his chances with the enemy so, while Ovi played Rico Suave with Nurse Ratched, he sidled over to the waiting area and hoped for the best, hands stuck in his pockets.

“Hey, motherfuckers.” Bad idea. Four sets of eyes locked onto him, eyes that were shooting him death rays. He was immediately greeted with a snarl from Crosby himself.

“What the _fuck_ are you doing here, douchebag?” Sid barked, baring his pearly whites under that cheesy ‘stache. “You’ve got a lot of nerve showing your ugly fuck-face in this town.”

“Look, asshole, you know the game,” Tom spat back, hands out now and clenched into fists. “I was just doing my job.” Damn straight. There was no fucking way Tom Wilson was going to back down to a princess like Cindy Crosby, a man with an ass so round and firm it should be _illegal_.

Not to be ignored, Geno got right up into Tom’s face, shoving Crosby aside. “He just a boy. He have fucking _family_. Little boy. He _cry_. You will go to hell and burn like French fry, like juicy piece of steak.”

Tom roared with laughter. Well, that was Geno making absolutely no sense at all, as usual. And the dude was obviously hungry. “Try speaking some _English_ for once,” he sneered into Malkin’s face. Dumoulin and Aston-Reese were staring daggers at him but keeping silent. Their eyes were glossy and rimmed in red. Crosby and Malkin…they didn’t look any different. Heh. Tom started joyfully running his mouth. “Have you girl _s_ been having a cry-fest? _Waaaa_ , _boo-fucking-hoo_. You hurt my fucking _feee-lings_. I’ve got my _peee-riod_.”

The next thing he knew, the right side of his face was on fire and he was seeing stars. Crosby had punched him in the jaw and was now wailing on his right shoulder, his ribs. A pair of gorilla hands was tightening around his throat, choking him. That was probably Geno. Then someone kneed him in the groin and kicked the back of his knee and he went down like a ton of bricks. Well, that wasn't very nice. Over the ringing of his ears and the sound of his own gasping breaths, he heard Ovi brokering a truce.

“Gentlemen! Please! We no here to fight. I have date with nurse. Please, don’t ruin sexy times for me.”

There were conciliatory grunts exchanged overhead, and then Ovi was telling him, “Get up, Tommy Boy. You embarrass me.”

And that was just the easy part. Tom straightened up on his feet, coughing and massaging his sore jaw, only to suddenly come face-to-face with the man who was Lamarck’s partner, his _husband_ , who was holding a small blond-haired boy in his arms. Tom recognized the child from the footage shown during the game in which he had put Lamarck in the hospital. It was Lamarck’s son, Marcel, and the boy looked like a Renaissance angel up close: blond curls, bright blue eyes, pink plump cheeks...if the kid sprouted a pair of wings and fluttered up to the ceiling, well, Tom wouldn’t even be surprised.

James held out his hand, his face a mask of controlled fury. “James Miller. Thanks for coming to see him.”

Tom wiped his mouth on his shirtsleeve, his face burning with shame, and shook the man’s enormous hand. This was so fucking awkward. He hadn’t expected this. “Uh, Tom Wilson.” He cast a furtive glance at Ovi, who was now shaking Miller’s hand in turn, then giving him a firm hug, then patting the toddler on the head with a tenderness Tom had never seen Ovi display.

“Everything good,” Ovi said to the small boy. “Everything be okay. Yes? Uncle Ovi promise.” 

Uncle Ovi? What the fuck was going on here? Did Ovi know Miller? Were they _friends_?

“He’s awake,” James said, paralyzing Tom with his grey eyes, “but he’s tired. Fifteen, twenty minutes should be okay. Room 510.” Then he turned to Ovi and the Pens, an overt dismissal. Tom assumed rightly that that was his cue to go see Lamarck, so he shuffled down the hallway reading the numbers next to each door. When he reached Room 510, he stopped and took a deep breath, gathered his wits. Why the fuck did he have to run into Lamarck’s partner, and why did Lamarck’s _husband_ have to be a paragon of alpha manhood? Miller stood six-foot-six and packed two hundred forty-five pounds of pure muscle and sinew. It didn’t dwarf Tom’s own six-foot-four stature, but the man had a good thirty pounds of testosterone-fueled bulk over him, thirty pounds of brute strength, power, macho righteous ownership. Goddamn it! He took another deep breath, knocked on the doorframe, and walked in.

A nurse was in the room with Lamarck, rolling aside some contraption on wheels that had been shining UV light onto his exposed chest. He was naked on the bed, the sheets covering his legs and resting low at his hips. A plastic bag slowly filling with urine was attached to the side of the aluminum bedframe, a catheter snaking out from under the sheet. Lamarck’s spleen had fully ruptured by the time they got him in the OR, but the medical staff had been able to remove it before he bled out. There was a six-inch scar from the incision under his ribcage, a crimson railroad track of sutures running through a landscape of purpled flesh covering three fractured ribs. Another tube exited his abdominal area, draining blood instead of urine into another plastic bag. He would have surgery to repair the partial tear in his spinal cord the next day.

The nurse, a small man with thick glasses, noticed Tom standing in the doorway. “Just a moment, sir. We’re almost done here.” He unplugged a cord and checked the monitor beeping quietly next to the bed, then bent close to Jean-Louis and asked, “Mr. Lamarck? Are you comfortable?” He pulled the sheet up higher, then laid a light blanket over him.

Jean-Louis’s eyes opened and Tom could see that the whites in both eyes were streaked in red. The blood vessels must have burst on impact. Gross, but not dangerous. The nurse went on, “You have another visitor. Okay?” Jean-Louis nodded once. “Remember,” the nurse said, pressing the small remote into Jean-Louis’s hand, “just push this button if you need anything. Okay?” Jean-Louis nodded again. “Very good, then. I’ll leave you to it.”

Tom stepped aside as the nurse wheeled the UV light equipment out of the room, saying by way of explanation, “It helps with the scarring.” Then the man’s face changed, his eyes widening behind the coke bottle lenses as recognition dawned on him, his expression shifting from warm to cool. “You…I hope you’re proud of yourself,” whispered the nurse. “He’ll be lucky to walk again.” It was a thoroughly unethical thing to say, but everyone in Pittsburgh, hockey fan or not, knew what had happened to Lamarck and the gravity of his injuries. Everyone in Pittsburgh knew who Tom Wilson was and what he looked like. Outside the ice arena, someone had taped up posters of Tom’s face, framed by the words “America’s Most Hated” and “Persona Non Grata.” Yeah, he was Mr. Popularity for sure.

Well, one didn’t succeed in pro sports without growing a thick skin. Tom easily shrugged off the comment—god knows he’d had things said to him that were a bazillion times worse, and that was _before_ this stupid incident with Lamarck—with a roll of his shoulders and entered the room. Lamarck was watching him, his face showing no reaction whatsoever. Did he not recognize him, the man who put him here?

Tom walked up to the bed and stood looking down at Lamarck, who was still following him with his bloodied eyes. “Uh, hey, it’s Tom. Wilson.” The kid looked utterly broken, his body at least, like he had been hit by a freight train. Well, he had, hadn’t he? Then, out of the blue, Lamarck smiled.

“Hello, Tom.” Lamarck pointed feebly at a chair. “Won’t you sit down?”

“Oh…yeah…sure…” _What a weird fucking day_ , thought Tom. _The guy’s not even mad_. There was a large, upholstered recliner tucked in a corner, the kind an adult could nap in if necessary. He grabbed the arm and dragged it next to the bed, the heavy wooden legs making a loud squealing noise against the linoleum floor. Man, he was making such an incredible impression. Bravo, Tom! The earsplitting sound didn’t seem to bother Lamarck, who only smiled again.

“I’m really high,” he said with a satisfied grin.

That prompted a knowing snort from Tom. “Yeah? They got you bombed on morphine? That shit’s the real motherfucking deal, man. Heh.”

Jean-Louis gazed about the room, as if he were searching for something elusive, then turned his attention back to Tom. “Why are you here?” Jean-Louis asked. “Aren’t you playing the Blue Jackets?”

Th’ fuck? Tom shifted in the chair, which was way more comfortable than he had expected. This conversation was also going way better than he had expected. “Uh, that’s tomorrow night.”

“Ah, oui. Demain.” Jean-Louis furrowed his brow. “Did you see James?”

“Who? Oh, uh, yeah.” Shit. Tom had grown up in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, where Miller’s grandfather had lived, not far from the University of Michigan, where Miller had played for the Wolverines and where Tom had gone to school himself. Their paths hadn’t crossed at U of M—James was six years older—but Tom had seen Miller’s college jersey in the display case, along with other trophies and awards he had garnered during his four years there. Miller was a homegrown hero, a man who had gone on to play for the Denver Broncos and was known for his charitable work. He had already “retired” from football by the time Tom played his first game in the NHL, Miller’s career cut short by a devastating spinal injury suffered on the field, and now his own partner was in the hospital for what could also be a career-ending spinal injury, courtesy of Tom Wilson. “I suppose he wants to kill me,” Tom muttered.

“James?” Jean-Louis seemed genuinely surprised. “James is a pussycat.” He shook his head, “No, you don’t need to worry about him. You should worry about Chloe. _She_ will kill you.”

Chloe, Miller’s six-year-old daughter. “So, you weren’t kidding about her?” asked Tom.

“Huh?”

“You were serious about her? What you said about being afraid to go home if the Pens lost? That’s what you told the media. I thought you were just bullshitting.”

“Ah, no no no…no bullshitting. I don’t dare cross her. She kicks my ass. She will kick your ass, too. You are warned.”

At that, Jean-Louis closed his eyes and drifted to sleep. Tom waited another minute, just to be sure, and then he finally breathed a sigh of relief. Thank the fuck god! Now he could get out of there and go buy Ovi that drink. Shit, he’d buy himself a few much-needed drinks. He was almost at the door when he heard Jean-Louis murmur, “Make sure those gloves come off tomorrow. Put on a good show for me, won’t you?”

 

______________________________________________________________________________________________ 

Notes:

______________________________________________________________________________________________ 

I am still completely psyched by last night’s Game 7 between the Capitals and Lightning, where our boy Tom put on one spectacular display after another. Here’s one of them:

[Wilson/Coburn Fight](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLa36QSRFaw)

 

 


	4. Truth or Consequences

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Both Tom and Sid have things to reconcile in their own minds.

 

Tom was proud of himself and it showed on his face as a shit-eating grin as he sauntered down the hallway, a huge weight lifted off his shoulders. The things he had been dreading on the drive to Pittsburgh hadn’t happened: the finger-pointing, the vitriol, the words he had heard so often on the ice from opposing benches, from fans on the other side. Jean-Louis had been…sweet, if not loopy from the painkillers. He hadn’t called him a scumbag, hadn’t asked him, “Why did you do that to me? What did I ever do to you?” The kid was a professional. That had to be it. Lamarck knew how the game was played and he was okay with it. Tom knew a little of Lamarck’s background from the hours of television viewing he had racked up prior to the visit. He knew that Lamarck had a cousin who played for the ZSC Lions, the Swiss National League ice hockey team, a defenseman with a reputation for being a vicious enforcer. And Miller. The man could have wrung his neck if he had wanted to but he hadn’t. Instead, he had offered his hand and allowed him to see his spouse lying wrecked on a hospital bed. Tom had escaped retribution and now he was going to hit a bar with his captain and celebrate.

The problem was, Ovi wasn’t waiting for him, he was nowhere to be seen; it was Crosby and Malkin, Dumoulin and Aston-Reese, and no one else. Dang. They escorted him out to the parking lot and beat the crap out of him, punching him in the gut and strategically below the belt so the bruises wouldn’t show. The pummeling—"Real fair, shitheads! Four against one? What a bunch of pussies!"— seemed to take fucking forever. Tom was hungry and irritable but, as much as he wanted to stuff his face with a thick juicy burger, he was grateful he had an empty stomach. He didn't need the humiliation of being seen puking by a gaggle of flightless birds.

The sun was already below the horizon when they dropped him off at the restaurant where Ovi was wooing his nurse at the bar. Tom took a stool at the other end and ordered a whiskey with a beer chaser. Ovi didn’t even look his way, but at the end of the night, when Ovi had wined and dined his latest conquest and probably fucked her in his car, the bartender handed Tom the bill: $629.77. What the hell had Ovi ordered? 

“Come,” Ovi said, collecting Tom at the bar while he smoothed his disheveled hair and clothes. He was reeking of god knows what. “We drive to Columbus now.” 

"Hey, thanks for having my back!" Tom wanted to say, but he decided that now would be a good time to pick his battles with care. He waited until they were in Ovi's car to ask him, "How do you know Miller? You two have met before?"

Ovi shrugged and reached into his shirt pocket, pulled out a toothpick and started digging around in his mouth. "Pube stuck in my teeth, I think," he muttered to himself, and then he explained, "I have played golf with him at one of his charity events. He is good golfer. I have also arm wrestled with him. He is good arm wrestler. He is terrible dancer, though. And he cannot sing. No. I always beat him at karaoke. Jean-Louis, though...he can sing. He has good voice, very good voice for singing. He is very pretty boy, especially when he dance. Too bad you smash him to pieces. He is also very good skater. But, I think, no more skating for him. No more hockey." Ovi sighed, toothpick poised in the air like a conductor's baton. "He can still sing for James, though. He no need legs to sing."

Several questions ran through Tom's mind in quick succession, like: Golf? Arm wrestling? Dancing? Karaoke? When the fuck had Ovi done all these things with Miller? With Lamarck? And, most importantly, just how badly drunk was Ovi at the moment? Then Ovi ran another red light and Tom stopped thinking altogether. He put his head back, crossed his arms over his chest, and screwed his eyes shut, but all he could see in his mind's eye was Ovi rapping* some horrible song in Russian.

***

He played like shit on skates the next night; his abs and groin were so bruised he couldn’t generate enough speed to slam an opposing player into the boards as hard as he normally could. It hurt too much. But he could shove his stick into someone’s skates and trip him, or cross-check him in the back. That was usually enough to provoke a retaliation, one that involved both players stripping off their gloves before throwing punches. It didn’t matter who came at him, he was ready and eager. He spent the night at the hotel after the game with his hand in a bucket of ice water to bring down the swelling in his knuckles. That left one hand free to swig out of the bottle of Johnnie Walker. The next morning was a travel day with the team heading to St. Louis to play the Blues. Ovi had hired someone to drive his car back to DC for him. Tom wondered if Lamarck had seen the game on TV. Doubtful. Jean-Louis was scheduled for surgery the day of the game with the Blue Jackets. Still, he could watch the replays afterwards when he was recuperating and see that he, Tom Wilson, was a decent human being. Lamarck had asked him to put on a show and he had.

On the trip down to St. Louis, Tom sat next to Ovi on the plane, like he usually did. 

“You want?” asked Ovi, offering Tom a bag of beef jerky.

“Sure.” Tom reached in and grabbed a few strips, chewed loudly before saying, “I think I’ll adopt a dog.”

Ovi rummaged through the bag like he was searching for lost treasure and then shoved three strips into his own mouth. “Dog is pain in ass. You will have to hire walker. No good. Better to have girlfriend. At least girlfriend you can fuck. Dog?” Ovi waved a finger in the air with disapproval. “No. In China, they eat dog. Did you know?”

“I think that might be an urban legend,” Tom replied. He had no clue. 

“Urban legend schmegend. They eat dog. I know.” Ovi chewed thoughtfully and then declared, “I would try. I live once, so I try.”

Good lord, thought Tom, I need to broaden my social network like _right now_.

At the hotel that night in St. Louis, Trotz knocked on his door and gave him the news. “He’s done,” Barry said.

Tom was wearing a pair of shorts and nothing else, getting ready to hit the shower and rub one out. “Who? What?”

“Lamarck.” Trotz stared down at the blue carpet with the abstract squiggles in beige. “He won’t play again.”

“Wh-what do you mean?” Tom looked over Barry’s shoulder, for _what_ he didn’t know. A way out, perhaps?

“He had the surgery to repair the tear in his spinal cord…but they say he won’t be able to play again. He’ll be lucky to walk. Get some sleep.” Then Trotz shuffled away to his own room, shoulders slumped.

Tom stood at the door in disbelief, a strange high-pitched whine coming and going between his ears. That short bespectacled nurse at the hospital in Pittsburgh had said the same thing: “He’ll be lucky to walk again.” He hadn’t believed it then, and he couldn’t believe it now. He was Tom Wilson, a man who played hard and proud, a man who loved the game. He wasn’t a bad person. He wasn’t the kind of guy who would ruin another man’s life. What in god’s name had gone wrong?

***

It had felt good— _satisfying_ was probably the right word—to put his fist into Wilson’s abs, his ribs, repeatedly and with gusto. Even better would have been the sharp pain of his knuckles knocking out a few teeth and splitting those plump limps, those lips that were naturally the color of a nice glass of Burgundy. Yeah. That would have been the icing on the cake to see Tom’s slutty mouth _bleed_ because of him, Sidney Crosby, but he knew better than to leave visible marks. They had all taken turns in the hospital parking lot, out in the back by the stand of arborvitae where they wouldn’t be seen, two of them holding Wilson’s arms while the other two punched the living daylights out of him in tandem. What sweet revenge. Except, none of it, as good as it felt, would do one goddamn thing to make right what had gone wrong. Sid was heartbroken. He had failed Lamarck— _Jean-Louis_ —failed to protect him when he knew that the kid was going to be targeted in every fucking game. “I should have seen it coming, should have anticipated it sooner,” Sid berated himself. But for some reason, Trotz hadn’t played Wilson’s line against his own until late in the third period. Sid was out of gas, they all were, and that’s when it had happened. And, now, they could only wait and hope for the best.

“Have fun sucking each other’s dicks,” Tom had sneered when they finally let him go, dumping him off at the restaurant that Ovi had told them he would be at to entertain his date.

That comment had made Sid’s blood boil and, for just a second, he was tempted to make Tom regret that remark. It would have been easy enough for the four of them to put Wilson on his knees and shove their cocks down his throat but, honestly, Sid didn’t trust the bastard not to rip into them with his teeth. He wasn’t exactly in the mood to lose a chunk of his dick to that son of a bitch and he was pretty sure that his teammates would be in agreement. So he had gone home, put on the television, and ate a box of Ding Dongs. He felt like shit, and not because he had OD'd on delicious hockey puck-shaped junk food courtesy of Hostess.

It was easy to justify the things he had done when the kid had been so willing. Truth be told, as soon as he had seen Lamarck he knew he wanted him, and not in any innocent way, either. He offered to mentor the rookie, let the kid live in his house like so many other veteran players would do for rookies: open their homes up to them, protect them, help them acclimate into the NHL. He was Sidney fucking Crosby. Who _wouldn’t_ jump at the opportunity to learn from the captain himself? Sid had taken Lamarck under his wing like the upstanding, decent, well-spoken professional that he was in the media. And then he had fucked the kid every chance he had: in his house on his very own king-sized bed, in hotel rooms during road games, in the backseat of his car in some strip mall parking lot just because…just because he couldn’t fucking help himself. And Jean-Louis…he hadn’t resisted. He never said _no_ to him.

Christ, the kid was beautiful. Nineteen and oh so horny, always hot to trot, always eager and hungry for affection and, holy fuck, the _sounds_ he would make…it was enough to make Sid cum harder than he had ever done with anyone else. Did Jean-Louis scream for him the way he would scream for his husband? Sid doubted it, but he liked to tell himself that the golden young man beneath him was _his_ during those moments, that it was Sidney Crosby who owned him, and not James Miller. It was a wonderful lie, a fantasy that had lasted for the better part of a winning season. And then Tom Wilson had wrecked it all. Jean-Louis’s career was likely over and gone would be those deep kisses, the sweet taste of his mouth, his thighs wrapped high around his waist as he thrust into him, the moans he would punch out of him with every snap of his hips, the slick heat of him as he took possession of the most exquisite creature he had ever laid eyes on.

Yes, there was guilt, always guilt for Sid because unlike what all the haters believed, he was a man with a conscience, warped as it may well be. Lamarck was married and deeply in love with his partner, but he was also a man, first and foremost, and that meant he could love someone and fuck another. It was what it was. “James won’t mind,” Jean-Louis had told Sid the first time they had kissed. They were both drunk and in the mood for sex because they had beaten the pants off of the Flyers and that meant celebrating with too much alcohol and other things. “He doesn’t have to know.” Well, that was it, wasn’t it? _He doesn’t have to know_. Sid had wanted to ask Jean-Louis, “How many other people have you fucked since you married him?” but he had merely smiled instead, then shoved his tongue into Jean-Louis’s mouth. He really didn’t want to know. He was pretty sure James wouldn’t want to know either. Did that make Sid a world class predatory pervert, that he was fucking someone so young, someone who belonged to another man? And then he would hear it, the soft, plaintive moans in his ear, and he would feel it, Jean-Louis’s breath hot against his skin, and all his guilt would fly out the window. Yeah, it was that easy to justify all of it, especially when Jean-Louis would cum for him, keening and crying and spurting hot and wet over both of them, because at the end of the day, Sid knew that he would be the one who was left empty-handed. Lamarck would go back to Miller and their home in Michigan once the season was over, and Sidney Crosby would return to Cole Harbour, to his girlfriend and the lie that he lived for the rest of the world.

 

* I wasn't kidding about Ovi rapping. Here he is:

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drfGobRWSOE>


	5. Nothing Else Matters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> James has his own reasons for holding no grudges, but his daughter has other ideas.

 

The uncertainty didn’t frighten him. James Miller had experienced a life-altering injury himself and come out on top, so he knew to take it one day at a time and to never allow his mind to wander outside of that timeframe. There were moments of weakness, of course, moments when he imagined the dreaded Worst Case Scenario, but then he would man-up and push aside the myriad, irrational worries, all the things he _couldn’t_ control. He had one objective: to care for a spouse and three children and there was no fucking room for self-pity.

For James, it had been serendipity, their chance meeting in the NICU two years ago when he had walked through the hospital wards trailed by a camera crew. It was all a part of his fundraising efforts, his charitable duties to raise awareness and garner donations to his foundation. His own children, a twin boy and girl, had been born premature and had spent over a month and a half in the NICU, their lives in the committed hands of nurses and specialists who had ensured the survival of newborns weighing four pounds, three pounds, or appallingly less. James was forever grateful. His twins had survived. _He_ had survived, and he would do what he could to raise money to help the families in need, to support the doctors and nurses and hospitals that had helped him, his own children, and so many others.

James remembered like yesterday the moment he had set eyes on Jean-Louis. Love at first sight. He had always scoffed at such a ridiculously romantic notion, something that was as far fetched as unicorns and leprechauns and rainbows leading to pots of gold. Only…it had happened to him. Yes. Love at first sight. That was what it was the very moment he had seen Jean-Louis sitting in the NICU staring at a child born far too soon and weighing far too little. James learned later on that the mother of the child had been a heroin addict who had overdosed a week after giving birth eight weeks early, leaving behind a tiny infant and a completely bewildered teenaged boyfriend. They—he and Jean-Louis—had exchanged a few words in front of the cameras, impromptu and unedited, and then shared a coffee afterwards off-camera, then, not all that much later, they shared more, much more in the privacy of James’s home.

At first, it had filled James with trepidation, this undeniable connection he felt with a stranger named Jean-Louis Lamarck who wanted to play in the NHL. It wasn’t just the fact that Jean-Louis was so young, only seventeen at the time for Christ’s sake! James had never felt any attraction to another man before and, yet, _this_ had felt like a _given_ ; it was so right, so _natural_. Jean-Louis, an academic genius of sorts, had just started his junior year as a foreign exchange student at the University of Michigan when they met; the dead girlfriend had been a student there as well. All of that was a moot point, though, wasn’t it? Jean-Louis at seventeen meant that he was considered _underage_ in the States to drink, to smoke, to engage in sexual relations with someone ten years older, and yet Jean-Louis had been willing to do all three things and as much as James had known he _shouldn’t_ , he just couldn’t resist the temptation. He was in love, after all, and love trumped everything. James’s career in pro football had ended the year before after suffering a severe spinal injury that had led to partial paralysis for almost a year. He could walk now, and have sex, having regained his full bodily functions after nine months of grueling physical rehabilitation. And then he had seen him, this boy barely a man with an infant son, utterly lost and devastated. So, yes, they had talked, they had sat together in the hospital cafeteria over a cup of awful coffee. And, a few short weeks later, they had made love and never looked back. Right or wrong, they could only go forward.

James had played hockey as a child growing up in Michigan, where the winters were interminable and everyone, boy or girl, learned to skate before they even learned to walk. He had loved hockey but had chosen football as a sport to pursue as a teenager. He was good at it and far more girls went to the Friday night high school football games than to the hockey games at the local ice arena. At sixteen, all he wanted to do was play sports and get laid, so football it was. He didn’t regret it. No. He had loved playing football—from high school through college and the pros—loved the competition, the adrenalin rush, the bone-crushing pain and satisfaction of putting it all out there on the gridiron. It had been glorious but all too brief. When he had woken up after the spinal surgery, floating on a strange cloud of morphine, he had been too disoriented to cry. The tears came afterwards, and they had been oh so bitter. For a year he had wondered if he should just kill himself, but his twins kept him alive. He couldn’t abandon them, even if the mother of his children had. He had been impotent during his recovery, during the long, unforgiving months of rehab, and his girlfriend had had enough of it. She was young and very pretty; she had _prospects_. She had lovers. So be it. “Just be happy,” James had told her. “I’ll take care of the kids.” She signed away her parental rights and left to shack up with some real estate mogul in Aspen.

He married Jean-Louis as soon as he turned eighteen, right on his birthday because James didn’t want to wait another moment to make him his. And then Jean-Louis was drafted by the Penguins and James had to give him up to another owner, another lover, the NHL. He wouldn’t deny Jean-Louis his dream, the reason he had come to the States in the first place, to have a chance to be scouted and then make it into the pro league. God. If James had known this would happen to this beautiful young man, would he have put a stop to it? Would he have said to Jean-Louis, “I’ll take care of you. Do something else,” or some other such selfish nonsense? Would he have stopped Jean-Louis from playing hockey? No. It was Jean-Louis’s choice, just as it was his own choice to play football and be irreparably damaged. It was the nature of the sport. "If you can’t live with the risk, then you don’t belong in it in the first place," James had always said when asked if he had regrets. It was for that reason alone that James hadn’t put his fist into Tom Wilson’s face that day in the hospital, the only reason he hadn’t killed the man with his bare hands. Wilson was just doing his job, even if it meant that Jean-Louis was left ruined. James had borne no ill-will towards the men who had destroyed his own career, so he had to let it go, this thing that Tom Wilson had inflicted on Jean-Louis. “Don’t worry, baby,” James had told Jean-Louis before he went under the knife for the second time in the space of three days. “I’ll be right here when you wake up. And then I’ll be with you every day after.” _Just wake up_ , James had prayed. _Then nothing else matters_.

***

The Capitals won the Stanley Cup for the first time in franchise history that year in June, defeating the Vegas Golden Knights who had been the Cinderella story for the whole fucking year, scoring goal upon goal on Marc-Andre Fleury who had been untouchable until then, the same Marc-Andre Fleury who had thwarted them before when he had played for the hated Pittsburgh Penguins. That made the victory that much sweeter…like a _bazillion_ times sweeter. And Ovi…holy shit, the man was on fucking fire, playing like an Olympian god. After winning the series 4-1 in Vegas, there followed days of drunken celebration, a parade, a visit to the White House, more drunken celebration. Then, in late July, when Tom was back home in Michigan getting a little too flabby, he received a call from Ovi.

“Tommy Boy, I’m in your, how you say, neck of the woods? I’m playing golf with James Miller right now and he was wondering if you would like to have lunch with me and him and Jean-Louis. You’re not too far, yes?”

Tom had just gotten out of the shower, having woken at eleven in the morning after way too much partying the night before. “What are you talking about? Like…today?”

“Yes, yes, today. You are, what, in Bloomfield Hills?” There was some muffled conversation in the background and then Ovi was back in his ear, speaking loudly, “I text you address. Be there at two o’clock. And don’t be late. I no like late. I will be hungry, so don’t make me wait. We are having ribeye and chocolate mousse for dessert. Is good food."

Shit. Tom hadn’t had any contact with Jean-Louis ever since that one hospital visit. Learning about his early demise from the NHL, thanks to him, Tom Wilson, had been a real downer. But then there had been the long-awaited Stanley Cup victory and night after night of no-holds-barred debauchery to provide happy distraction. So…yeah…fuck. Why couldn’t Ovi leave him alone during the offseason? But like the day of that hospital visit, his captain wasn’t giving him a choice, having ended the call before Tom could even get a word in to decline the unwanted invitation to share a meal with two people who had every reason to despise him. A minute later, his phone dinged with the address to Miller’s house. “Goddamn it,” Tom muttered with a scowl. It would take less than an hour to get from Bloomfield Hills to Grosse Pointe. He had plenty of time to get there and no excuse not to show up.

***

The front door of the sprawling brick ranch house was opened by a blonde wisp of a prepubescent girl, who took one look at Tom and promptly greeted him with a, “Welcome to our home, motherfucker.” Then she turned her pretty little ponytailed head to shout over her shoulder, “Dad! That asshole Tom Wilson is here!” Tom heard James screaming back from somewhere inside the house, “Well, let him the fuck in, baby girl!”

Chloe turned back to face Tom with a stern expression. “Dad says you can come in. But after lunch, I’m going to break your balls. Capiche?” 

Something about the girl’s tone of voice told Tom that she actually meant to make good her threat. He recalled the things that Jean-Louis had said about Chloe, his abject fear of her, and now Tom understood that he really hadn’t been kidding. The girl couldn’t have weighed more than forty-five pounds, but she might as well have been a seven-foot tall Amazon ready to emasculate him with her teeth. Tom hesitated in place as she continued blocking the doorway, her unflinching grey eyes locked onto him. “And don’t bother asking Uncle Ovi to help you. He already told me that you’re all mine. You can wear one of Papa’s diapers if you want ‘cause I’m going to make you shit your pants!”

Oh, Jesus. What kind of Satanic child was this? Just then, a boy appeared next to her wearing a Broncos jersey with Miller’s old number 87 on it. “C’mon sis, don’t be rude.” The boy pulled Chloe aside and told Tom, “Come on in. They’re in the back. I’ll show you.”

“Uh, you must be Benjamin,” Tom muttered with relief, stepping carefully around Chloe in the foyer as she shut the door and locked it. He almost expected to hear a rumble of evil laughter behind him.

“Everyone calls me Ben,” the kid replied. He cast Tom a sideways glance as he walked him down the hallway and through the kitchen. “Guess you’re happy about winning the Stanley Cup,” Ben said.

The sadness in the boy’s voice kind of killed Tom’s usual enthusiastic response. “Yeah, well, first time in franchise history, so, yeah, it’s fucking awesome,” he said glumly. For a moment, he cringed at the fact that he’d used the F-word in front of a six-year-old, but then again, it was obvious that the kids were used to hearing it. By Tom’s estimation, Chloe could probably out-chirp every player in the NHL, and that was pretty darn impressive by any standards. He stepped through the open French doors onto the back deck, where both Ovi and James were standing at the Weber grill cooking some humungous slabs of meat and laughing loudly over some joke. There was a large table set with plates and glasses, covered bowls holding several side dishes and salads and bottles of wine. An aluminum tub of ice held beers and bottles of juice and water. Tom held up the two six-packs he had brought along. Sheesh, he wasn't a heathen arriving empty-handed. “You want these in the tub?” he asked by way of greeting.

Both men turned and nodded, Ovi clearly toasted already with a glass of whiskey in one hand and a cigar in the other, his face flushed and his eyes glassy.

“Hey, Tom. Glad you could join us,” James said, shaking Tom’s hand after he had deposited the beers in the ice. “I know it’s short notice, but Ovi was in town for a round of golf and it’s a nice day, so why not, right?”

“Yeah, sure, thanks.” Tom unscrewed the cap off his beer bottle and took a swallow. He looked around the patio, puzzled. “Uh, where’s Jean-Louis?”

“He’s laying down, but I’ll go get him. Watch the steaks, will you? Make sure they don’t get past rare.” And with that, James handed Tom the tongs and disappeared back inside the house.

“Is beautiful here, yes?” Ovi opined, waving his cigar at the manicured backyard bordered with beds of flowering perennials and dotted with ash, oak, and maple trees. He was wearing a hideous outfit: a checkered polo shirt in blue and orange, and shorts striped in pink and brown. Was Ovi color blind or something, or was this his standard golf attire? “Is like Garden of Eden.” On the railing at which Ovi was leaning sat a half empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s.

“Where the fuck did you get these clothes?” asked Tom.

“What?” Ovi looked down at his body. “I make fashion statement. What wrong with that?” Ovi patted Tom on the shoulder roughly, shaking his head at him like a slobbering dog. “Relax, Tommy Boy. James no hate you.”

Tom snorted, beer going up his nose. “I’m not worried about Miller. Did you meet his daughter?”

“Yes, yes, Chloe. She is fierce little princess,” Ovi said with approval.

“She called me a motherfucker and said she was going to break my balls. Un-fucking-believable.”

“Heh. I would be scared if I were you. She is like most lethal Chechen assassin. She is good girl.” 

“Speak of the devil,” Tom mumbled under his breath.

Chloe walked out onto the deck leading Marcel by the hand. She stood the boy in front of Tom and said to her two-year-old stepbrother, “Take a good look at this shithead, Marcel.” Then she picked the boy up and hugged him tightly in her thin arms, kissing him on the cheek with sisterly affection. “This is the jerk-off who broke your Papa and I’m going to kick his ass for it.”

Ovi roared with laughter. Th’ fuck? Tom shot him a furious glance, but then James reappeared with Jean-Louis—only Jean-Louis wasn’t walking, he was in a freaking wheelchair—and suddenly the prospect of having his ass kicked by a six-year-old girl didn’t seem so bad after all.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Christ, this chapter was so dialogue-heavy in the end, but I have only so much in the tank when it comes to expository writing. Ugh.


	6. Life is Sweet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tom has a pleasant lunch with Jean-Louis. Life goes on.

 

Sometimes the universe hands you a free pass, and when that happens, you take it first and ask questions later, sort of like that old saying Tom's grandfather would mutter at times to him with a wagging finger: “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.” Like, what the fuck did _that_ mean? Tom had always assumed that the old codger had meant that if things went your way, be fucking grateful, or something along those lines. Shit, he wasn’t a goddamn _scholar_ , he was just a hockey player. Leave all the mysteries of the intellect on the freaking doorstep, thank you very much. That afternoon, just before the rib eyes were ready to come off the grill and Tom was wondering if that crazy Chloe was going to punch him in the nuts as soon as his groin was left unguarded, a neighbor came by to take the twins to a pool party down the street. Phew. One bullet dodged. Tom proudly laid the slabs of perfectly charred meat on a platter and set it on the table to rest under a sheet of aluminum foil, the key to a juicy steak. He had learned that trick from watching some cooking show on television, not that he was going to admit to that. Instead, he declared, “My old man always gives it ten minutes under the foil,” to which Ovi moaned, “I be dead in ten minutes from starvation!”

James, meanwhile, had rolled the wheelchair up to the table and lit a joint, which he held to Jean-Louis’s lips for a toke. The saccharine sweetness of the gesture was enough to turn Tom’s stomach until he realized the ‘why’ of it. Jean-Louis’s hands, which he kept in his lap, jerked and twitched erratically, the tremors coming and going in unpredictable waves like someone suffering from MS or Parkinson’s or the DTs. Tom turned his face away and pretended to look at a robin hopping around in the yard like he gave a shit about indigenous wildlife, but Ovi was ripped and not interested in tiptoeing around the tulips.

“Hey, Jean-Louis, you are like my cousin Sasha,” Ovi stated in drunken amusement. He waved the hand that wasn’t holding his drink in the air in an appalling display of mimicry. “When he was born, my Aunt Natalya drop him on his head, and after that…how you say?...he is like total spaz.”

Jean-Louis’s eyes widened into saucers, and then he burst out laughing, not at Ovi’s ridiculously insensitive remark, but at Tom’s mortified expression, which was way more entertaining to him for some inexplicable reason. James merely shook his head and took a long toke himself before holding it out to Tom and saying, “Wilson, why don’t you come over here and help him with this? I need to get a few things from the fridge. Ovi, you come with me, you stupid fuck.”

Jean-Louis was still grinning when Tom sat down next to him and put the joint to his mouth. Could this get any more awkward? Marcel had crawled into Jean-Louis’s lap and was staring back at Tom, his blue eyes unblinking and weirdly judgmental. For the first time, Tom noticed that the child didn’t make a peep, never said a word. But what did he know about babies? The kid was, what, two? Almost three? Did they even talk at that age? “So, uh, how’s the rehab going?” asked Tom in the same casual tone of voice as if he were saying, “How about that World Cup, eh?” Jean-Louis was wearing a light T-shirt and a pair of shorts and the clothes veritably hung off his body, he had grown so thin in the four months since Tom had seen him in the hospital in early April.

“Rehab?” Jean-Louis exhaled slowly and sighed. “It was fine, and then they found I have something called a CSF leak.” He rolled his eyes, sick of having to explain himself for probably the one hundredth time. “Basically, there’s a tear in the membrane surrounding my brain and it’s leaking fluid. It was coming out of my nose…out of my fucking _ears_. My doctor wants to give it six months to repair itself. If not, then I have to have surgery again. In the meantime, I have to stay on my back or side, horizontal basically, except to eat or shower. I’m allowed to be upright for an hour at a time at the most.”

“Is…is that what’s causing the spasms?”

“No. They repaired the tear in the spinal cord, but there’s some kind of…uh…errant messages between the brain, nerves, and muscles. It’s complicated and the hope is that it will resolve itself through time. I’m much better now…although, it takes me forever to wipe my ass.”

That last comment prompted a laugh from both of them. Tom couldn’t believe Jean-Louis was being so nonchalant about his condition; maybe he was in denial or something. If it were him, he’d be punching a wall. “Why are you in a wheelchair?” Tom dared to ask. “Can’t you walk?”

“It depends,” said Jean-Louis. He leaned forward for another toke. “Some days I can, a little, some days I can’t. James thinks it’s safer if I’m in a wheelchair, so I don’t fall down and make things worse. The pot helps, though. It helps with the tremors.” He didn’t tell Tom about the shooting pain that ran down his legs, the debilitating migraines, the sudden weakness in his extremities that would land him on the floor if he were standing. He didn’t know his body anymore; it had morphed into a feral animal trapped inside a cage, eager to escape. He couldn’t control it, couldn’t predict what it would do at any given moment. Yes, the pot helped. It helped him let go of his fear and anxiety, it helped him to not give a damn, it helped him forget his rage and helplessness. It made him believe the lie he told himself: “I haven’t lost everything.”

“It’s not helping with your appetite,” Tom wanted to say, but decided against commenting on Jean-Louis’s almost skeletal frame. Did he feel guilty, to see him in such a pathetic state? Yeah, he did. Tom was a proud man, a man’s man, not given to sentimentality or overly empathetic feelings, but even if Jean-Louis wasn’t blaming him and holding him accountable for a life that was now confined to a bed and a wheelchair with only more surgery to look forward to with a brave smile…Christ, he would take it all back if he could. “Mind if I…?” asked Tom, holding the joint in the air.

“Go ahead,” Jean-Louis said, “I have plenty more.”

Tom sucked on the joint like…like a man who needed redemption. “You must fucking hate me.” He held the joint back to Jean-Louis’s mouth, but Jean-Louis pinched it between his own fingers and brought it to his lips in his shaking hand.

“Life is sweet,” Jean-Louis murmured with a genuine smile, “no matter what.”

They ate lunch, chatted about the fact that John Tavares had accepted a contract with the Toronto Maple Leafs and all the other latest gossip about the various trades in the offseason. James cut up the steak and grilled zucchini and fed it to Jean-Louis one forkful at a time, gave him his wine in a _sippy cup_ so he wouldn’t spill it all over himself. It was humiliating, so fucking embarrassing to witness a grown man being treated like a child, but there was no other way; Jean-Louis couldn’t bring a fork to his own mouth, much less a wine glass. At one point, Marcel, who wouldn’t leave Jean-Louis’s lap, took pieces of food off the plate and fed him from his own fingers. It was so bizarre to see this toddler hand-feeding his own invalid father. The sight didn’t seem to bother Ovi, who apparently had a high tolerance for utterly fucked up situations. Tom, though, was just grateful he was a little toasted from the pot and so hungry he was able to let his stomach rule the day. The steak was perfect: evenly rare on the inside, nice and charred on the outside. He glanced over at Jean-Louis and wondered what could possibly be going through his mind. Was it all just an act to spare Tom any unnecessary grief? As incomprehensible as it was, neither James nor Jean-Louis appeared to be bitter. How could they not be bitter? What kind of drugs were they both on? God, whatever they were snorting or shooting up, he wanted some. Badly.

***

On the second day of training camp in September, Tom heard the news from Ovi.

“He die yesterday. Meningitis and some strange infection. Did you know, when they take out spleen…”

Tom didn’t hear the rest of it, _couldn’t_ hear the rest of it because there was a piercing whine in his ears that came and went like a siren in the night. That day in July had ended so pleasantly: cigars and bourbon around the fire pit after the most amazing chocolate mousse—a dessert that Jean-Louis had made from scratch, god knows how—and Tom’s testicles intact because James’s daughter hadn’t returned by the time he had left to go home. The early evening air was cool as he drove with the top down on his convertible, the radio blasting “Starboy” at full volume. Everything was going to be alright. How couldn’t it be alright? Jean-Louis had smiled at him, told him to give him a call sometime, then wished him a safe drive home.

“Yeah, sure, I will,” Tom had said, then hopped into his car without a care in the world. Life was indeed sweet. Only, he had never called Jean-Louis because there was always more time, there was the rest of his life to call him, see how he was doing, make good on his word…sort of. It wasn’t like he had _promised_. That afternoon after drills, he stopped by the luxury car dealership and ordered a Lamborghini Huracán Spyder in red. It seemed like the perfect solution: a chariot to take him straight to heaven, The Weeknd bidding him a happy ride to oblivion.

 

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Notes:

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I leave you with the song I have Tom listening to and probably the best song of 2016/2017:

[The Weeknd, "Starboy"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zPVmPF7NPk)

 


End file.
